Thursday 28 April 2011

Hello - I'm Here!

Ok, today has been such a frustrating day that I want to scream into my pillow and then rip it apart! Sounds harsh I know but at least by doing this I might get noticed more.

What started out as a innocent routine food shopping trip (routine as in once a month when I have the energy for it) turned into me almost getting killed, literally. I was walking through the aisles of a well known supermarket here in the UK, with my husband and trusty walking stick in one hand and the other hand free to grab anything and everything off the shelves when I started to realise that no-one had noticed that my walking stick was visable and they decided to push me out of the way regardless. One woman almost ran her trolley into me as she was too busy looking at different types of eggs. They are eggs woman, doesn't matter if they are free range or not, they still come out of a chicken's bottom regardless! Would someone run a trolley into a person who was in a wheelchair? - No because people see wheelchair users and go out of their way to accommodate them and respect the fact that they are disabled. People see oldtimers with walking sticks and again, people react in a respectful way, even to people who are on crutches and people with pushchairs, (unfortunately pushing my son in his pushchair has got too much at times). But a 30 year old woman with a walking stick - different story. She doesn't look ill so she can't really be ill, she doesn't have a cast or anything so nothing is broken, we'll just ram our trollies into her and kick her stick out from under her - she won't care. 

Then there was the car park. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get a lovely shiny Blue Badge yet so parking in disabled spaces is a no go and some idiot with no children whatsoever in his flashy sports car had just taken up the last parent/child place so my husband had to park quite a fair distance from the shop entrance and carry our 15 month old son to the trolley park whilst I limp along with my stick. Getting into the supermarket was fine, getting out of it was not. Trolley loaded, my wonderful hubby speeded back to the car to load it up then come back for me but stupidly I thought, what the hell, I'll just walk slowly to the car. Obviously people couldn't see me walking slowly, with a silver/grey aluminium walking stick, blue jeans and white, yes WHITE tee-shirt (its not like you could miss me) so this enabled one irate driver to almost turn into me whilst he was looking the other way. Here's a tip people - generally don't turn into a corner whilst looking in the opposite direction, stop first and asses BOTH sides. (and this is coming from someone who isn't allowed to drive anymore)

Then to top it all off, here I was again, after several deep breaths, walking, keeping to one side in a one-way lane, making sure there were no cars reversing out of their parking bays when another idiot decided to turn in the lane heading in the wrong direction, swerve to an empty space and then reverse out of it again literally inches from where I was walking and he looked annoyed that I was walking so close and he had to wait until I had passed him for him to continue, and believe me that took a while. If I could walk faster I would but I can't and its people like these today that just ignore the fact that any joe blogs can be ill and not look it. 

For once throughout my illness, today I felt like an inconvienience and I hated it. I'm a nice person, worthy of people's attention and respect that is shown to any disabled person because even if we don't have the guide dog beside us or the use of a wheel chair (I know that a lot of ME sufferers do have a chair and I respect that fact), like it or not CFS/ME sufferers to a point are disabled. We have a dibilitating illness that affects our daily lives even if its just from an hour of sever fatigue to weeks not being able to move, its dibilitating, and its frustrating and I applaud all of us, whether you are bedbound, wheelchair bound, or housebound, or even have a minor degree of suffering, I applaud us all for keeping strong, not letting our illness take the simple things in life such as food shopping, away from us. 

Stay strong Spoonies - (hehe, I love that term).

2 comments:

  1. Rebecca I've never heard the word Spoonies before.... pls explain haha. And I too get people looking at me with death in their eyes when I'm not moving as fast as they'd like (although i can still manage quite well without a stick) and huff and puff and tut when I get confused (brain fog is a BITCH).

    I think in modern society tolerance is on it's way out of the window. Glad you made it home ;) xoxo

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  2. Hi Lisa, Spoonies is a term coined by a wonderful woman who has Lupus and she was trying to explain why she didn't look ill. The article is on this link: http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

    Hope you enjoy it :-) it makes a lot of sense. xxxx

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